DANE COUNTY AREA GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY

Dane County Area Genealogical Society is serving as the host society for this year’s Wisconsin State Genealogical Society Gene-A-Rama conference, which will be held 27 & 28 March at the Sheraton Madison on John Nolen Drive. The featured speaker will be Cyndi Ingle, the creator of Cyndi’s List. Click here to view more information about Gene-A-Rama 2015.
More importantly, click here to sign up for times you can help us be the host.Thanks!

Membership dues for 2014:
$23.00/year individual or $28.00/year family ($8.00 discount if you get the newsletter only by e-mail)
Membership year is 1 January-31 DecemberPrintable 2014 membership form (111 KB PDF file)
Or go to our Work in progress new website to join or renew online

Note:Many (but not all) of the URLs listed in recent newsletters are hot links. If you click on the URL, your browser should go directly to the web page being referenced. (You must be using either Adobe Acrobat Reader version 5 or some version of Adobe Reader for these hotlinks to work.)

The Governing Board consists of the directors, the immediate past president, and the standing committee chairs. Any person who fits in more than one of these categories is not replaced by a substitute, and gets only one vote on the Governing Board. The Governing Board usually meets on the third Monday of each month. Contact the society president or see our monthly newsletter to get the time and location.

Ins and Outs of RootsMagic - Our speaker will be Sherry LLoyd.
Sherry will provide a tour of the computer software program RootsMagic. The Ins and Outs of RootsMagic will include not only how to enter your data but ways to share information by way of charts, reports, books or CDs. It is one of the easiest software programs to use but one of the most powerful programs available. RootsMagic is an award-winning genealogy software program that is not only easy to use but has many features that will allow a beginner or an experienced genealogist the tools to record and share your family history. RootsMagic also has a free software program RootsMagic Essentials. The 7 August program will demonstrate some of the features of this software including the basics for recording genealogy information, printing reports, wall charts, source management and even publishing your book!

6 November 2014

Religious Records: More Than Hatchings, Matchings & Dispatchings - Our speaker will be David McDonald, CGSM. What are the less typical records available in many congregations/parishes? These can add depth to a researcher’s understanding of their families of interest, both in the Christian tradition and in other religious communities.

4 December 2014

Third Annual Show and Tell Social

8 January 2015

Meeting cancelled due to extremely cold weather

5 February 2015

Polish Genealogy/Polish Heritage Club - Our speaker will be Joanna Pasowicz, President of the Polish Heritage Club of Wisconsin - Madison.

Handouts from some earlier DCAGSmeetings:Tip Toe Through the Tombstones, by Ann L. Wells (5 August 2010). Handout (1 page)Exciting New Developments at FamilySearch, by Maureen Brady (7 October 2010). Handout (15 slides; 5 pages) / Presentation (72 slides; 36 pages).Have you tried…? , by James L. Hansen, F.A.S.G (4 November 2010). Handout (1 page).Finding Those Who Served: Genealogy Resources at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, by Russell Horton (2 December 2010). Handout (1 pages).Ways to Display Your Family Trees, by Pat Skubis (6 January 2011). Handout (1 page) / Presentation (55 pages).Genealogical Organization: From Papers to Research, by Ann L. Wells (3 March 2011). Handout (1 page).Lineage Societies, by Bob Stone and Ruth Simpson (7 April 2011). Daughters of the American Revolution handout (4 pages) Sons of the American Revolution handout (4 pages)The Power of Yes: A Case Study of Norwegian Immigration to Minnesota, by Joyce I. Nigbor (2 June 2011). Handout (1 page) Reading Genealogy Books on the Web, by Rollie Littlewood (7 July 2011). Handout (4 pages)Branches and Leaves Filled in at Last, by Patricia Skubis (4 August 2011). Handout (1 page)The Flavor of Wisconsin: History and Culture through Recipes, by Terese Allen (1 September 2011). Handout (3 page quiz)The 1940 Census, by Pat Skubis (2 February 2012). Presentation as PDF file or as PowerPoint fileGetting the Most Out of an Obituary, by George L. Findlen, CGSM (5 April 2012). Handout (2 pages)The World of Genealogy Webinars, by Rollie Littlewood (3 May 2012). Handout (2 pages) Revolutionary War & the War of 1812, by Pam Anderson (6 September 2012). Handout (2 pages)Introduction to DCAGS’ New Online Membership Features, by Walker Crawford (4 October 2012). Handout (1 page)Using WorldCat for Genealogy, by Rollie Littlewood (4 October 2012). Handout (4 pages) / Screen Shots displayed during
talk (18 slides)Family History Projects, by Lori Bessler (3 January 2013). Handout (3 pages)Newspaper Nuggets: Going Beyond the Obituary Notice, by Kathy Sparks (2 May 2013). Handout (3 pages)Dane County Historical Society … Who Knew?, by Mary Clark (7 November 2013).
PowerPoint presentation (43 panels; 8 pages)What is Genealogy, Anyway?, by George L. Findlen (2 January 2014). Handout (3 pages)Culture, Heritage and Swiss Roots, by Beth Zurbuchen (6 February 2014)  Two handouts: Swiss Society of Genealogical Studies (2 pages) and Switzerland and Genealogy (3 pages) Genealogy Research and Cartographic Resources, by Jaime Stoltenberg (6 March 2014). Handout (1 page) / Presentation as PDF file or as PowerPoint fileFree Online Resources That You Can Access from Home or at Your Library, by Pat Skubis (5 June 2014). Presentation as PDF file or as PowerPoint file

Announcements of special interest to society members:
Citing staffing issues, the Wisconsin State Vital Records Office announced in the fall of 2010 that they were suspending all search appointment opportunies from 1 October 2010 until at least 28 February 2011. This office did open again for onsite searches in March, but with a much tighter restriction than before on the frequency of search appointments. Each researcher is now restricted to four hours of on-site searching in a three-month period. Afternoon appointments are no longer available.

The Wisconsin State Genealogical Society (WSGS) is sponsoring its 2014 Gene-A-Rama conference on 4-5 April 2014 at the Holiday Inn, 4601 Calumet Ave., Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
The featured speaker will be Lisa Alzo.
Periodically visit the WSGS website for further information as the plans develop for this conference.

The Wisconsin State Genealogical Society (WSGS) is sponsoring its 2014 fall seminar on 18 October 2014 at the Hotel Mead, 451 East Grand Ave., Wisconsins Rapids, Wisconsin. The featured speaker will be Jay Fonkert, CGSM.
Periodically visit the WSGS website for further information as the plans develop for this seminar.

Sally Jacobs, a local archivist who operates Jacobs Archival Services in Madison, has informed us that she has started a blog called The Practical Archivist. She describes it as chock full of archiving tips and geeky tidbits for genealogists and keepers of the family photo album  giving away some of my best photo archiving
tips at no charge.

Genealogy classes offered in the Dane County Area
WisconsinUnionMini-courses
Dates for next set of classes: three Tuesday evenings, (not given in fall 2013)
Location: UW-Madison campus (specific location TBD)
Instructor: Sherry Lloyd

Dane County Historical Society 27 May 2012
The DCHS maintains a collection of published and unpublished archival materials relating to Dane County at the Lussier Family Heritage Center. They offer research help, answering genealogical and other research or reference inquiries from the public; see the DCHS website for further information. DCHS has posted or contributed old Dane County plat maps which can be viewed on the web; the 1873 map can be viewed on the DCHS website; the 1861, 1890, 1899, and 1911 maps can be searched for from the home page of the University of Wisconsin Digital Collection.

Ancestry Library Edition 9 March 2008
This is not a web site which can be accessed from your home, but it can be used from any of the six computers in the Reading Room of the WHS library labeled Reserved for Genealogical and Federal Document Research ONLY. Ancestry Library Edition replaces AncestryPlus; it offers most of the databases available with individual subscriptions to <ancestry.com>; it does not include the following collections: Family & Local Histories, Historical Newspapers, OneWorldTree, Filby’s Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, Biography & Genealogy Master Index (BGMI), PERiodical Source Index (PERSI), and Freedman’s Bank Records. Additionally all personalized features normally available when using <ancestry.com>, such as surname alerts, are unavailable when using Ancestry Library Edition. For several years, most of the databases available with paid personal subscriptions to <ancestry.com> have been available free of charge at most Family History Centers. This changed in April of 2007; now only about thirty-seven of the databases offered by <ancestry.com> are available on the computers at most Family History Centers. A list of these remaining databases can be seen at
<www.ancestry.com/fhc/dblist.aspx>; note that most of these databases include just the indexes  only the three included U.S. census databases include the actual data images. Several other subscription genealogy database services have moved to fill the void left by the nearly complete loss of Ancestry databases at Family History Centers;
World Vital Records, Godfrey Memorial Library, Footnote.com, HeritageQuest Online, and Kindred Konnections have all announced that their databases will soon be available at suitably-equipped FHCs, including the one in Madison. Click here for further information on this development.

HeritageQuest Online Index 3 March 2008
This website can be accessed from any of the six computers in the Reading Room of the WHS library labeled Reserved for Genealogical and Federal Document Research ONLY, but there is also a high likelihood that it can be accessed from your home (or any other location from which you access the world wide web) for little or no extra cost. Many libraries are making this subscription service available to their members  for instance, most of the fifty-two public libraries in Adams, Columbia, Dane, Green, Portage, Sauk and Wood Counties which belong to
the South Central Library System.The URL to start with for SCLS access is <http://www.scls.lib.wi.us/cgi-bin/auth.cgi?connectto=HQ>; you must provide your library card number each time you use this service.
It can be used to search a head-of-household index for most years of the US federal census (currently there are indexes available for twelve years, but only five states have been indexed for the 1930 census). It can be used to browse the images for all years of the US federal census from 1790 through 1930. It can be used to do full-text searches of more than 20,000 (slated to grow to more than 25,000) genealogy and local history publications, and to display images of any individual page in any one of these publications.
This resource is now generally the favored access point to PERSI (the Periodical Source Index, from the Allen County Public Library); note that as of March 2008, due to unusual circumstances PERSI indexing is running about a year and a half behind on HeritageQuest Online.

Research Help documents from the Family History Library
This link takes one to a list of a portion of the available Research Help documents which includes those specifically for Wisconsin. By using various sort-order and starting-letter menus on this website, you can get access to virtually all of the Research Help documents published by the FHL. All of these Research Helps are available as a web page or a series of web pages; most are available as [free] downloadable PDF files; some can be ordered as printed documents which will be mailed to you [for a small fee] by the Family History Library.

MadCat (catalog of the Univ.of Wisconsin-Madison libraries, including the computerized portion of the library of the Wisconsin Historical Society)

ArCat (computerized portion of the catalog of the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society)

WorldCat (a combined [union] catalog database from about 9,000 libraries in the USA [including about 500 in Wisconsin] and forty-four other countries; sometimes referred to as OCLC [the corporate sponsor] or FirstSearch [the search program itself]).
7 June 2007
This service will help you get publication data for books and other library material which may not be available in your regular library. it will usually NOT tell you for sure if an item can be obtained via InterLibrary Loan, because it does not normally reveal the lending policies of the libraries which hold an item. Individuals who hold library cards in any of the 52 public libraries in Adams, Columbia, Dane, Green, Portage, Sauk and Wood Counties which belong to the South Central Library System can access WorldCat from any computer with Internet access. The URL to start with for SCLS access
is <http://www.scls.lib.wi.us/cgi-bin/auth.cgi?connectto=WC>; you must provide your library card number each time you use this service.

South Central Library System (encompassing 61 libraries in Adams, Columbia, Dane, Green, Portage, Sauk and Wood Counties)
10 December 2006
(see especially the links to Databases and to connecting to LINKcat--a shared online catalog for 46 of the libraries in the system)

Information about obituaries published in the Wisconsin State Journal;
use the subject search tool in the local newspapers portion of LinkCat to search the index of obituaries published between 1960 and a few days ago 7 June 2008
Note: the entire newspaper index system, including the index to obituaries published in the Wisconsin State Journal between 1960 and 2002, is currently (as of late April 2011) our-of-order, a temporary casualty of the new LINKCat system.Full text of obituaries published between 11/19/2002 to just a few days ago

Brigham Young University’s Family History Archives search engine
29 February 2008
BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library, the Family History Library, and the Allen County Public Library are working together on a project to eventually digitize over 100,000 out-of-copyright family histories and thousands of local histories. The collections will have every-word search capability; search results are linked to digital (PDF) images of the original publication. A good beginning has been made, but be forewarned that searches can be very time-consuming. Search hits lead to individual pages, but the actual hits are not highlighted on the page.

State of Wisconsin Blue Book (complete text of every Blue Book issued since 1995, plus selected feature articles dating back to 1983; search capability is included)

Family History Center  click here to learn about databases available at the Madison Family History Center (in addition to those created by the Family History Library)
5 April 2008

Do you want to check out the experimental databases available at FamilySearch Labs? Click here to see what’s currently online. Note that some of these databases are searchable, while others are only browsable.
26 July 2008

Forest Hill Cemetery (Madison) This website now provides the ability to search burial records by name or lot number (a spot check iindicated that burials are listed within three weeks of their occurrence)
7 June 2008

Online Searchable Death Indexes & Records This website has an extensive directory of links to websites with online death indexes, listed by state and county throughout the U.S.A.. Included are death records, death certificate indexes, death notices & registers, obituaries, probate indexes, and cemetery & burial records. 10 March 2010

A bit of society history:
The Dane County Genealogical Society (formerly known as the South Central Chapter of the Wisconsin State Genealogical Society)
and the Computer Assisted Genealogists of Southern Wisconsin (formerly known as the South Central Wisconsin PAF Users Group) merged in September of 2006 to form the Dane County Area Genealogical Society

There have been visitors to this page since 19 November 2001.

Note: This home page can now be reached by entering just dcags.org into the location or address field of most browsers.
(The official URL of http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~widcags/ still works as well.)